


Don't You Forget About Me

by Wisteria_Leigh



Series: Prompted Works [8]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Phone Calls & Telephones, Prompt Fic, The Barns (Raven Cycle), Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 06:18:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16887225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisteria_Leigh/pseuds/Wisteria_Leigh
Summary: Ronan knows he’s not a disturbance to Adam, not unless he’s REALLY trying to be. But his hands are still shaking and terrible feelings are churning in his stomach and stretching tightly across his chest, so maybe he’s not the most rational human being at this very moment. And it’s very easy to dismiss rationality when you’re alone in the dark with only the dead silence of approaching winter and the fleeting memory of a bad dream to keep you company.





	Don't You Forget About Me

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by an anon on Tumblr from [this list](http://purrincesscatitude.tumblr.com/post/180566839025/drabble-challenge): 66: “How could I ever forget about you?” Or 94: “I had a bad dream again?”
> 
> It's all about the power of AND, my friends.

It’s late. Really late. Just bordering on “unacceptably late.” Ronan’s holding his phone in a shaking hand, rubbing sleep from his eyes with the other. Adam’s number is already queued. He knows Adam isn’t asleep yet; he only goes to bed this early during school breaks, or when he’s sick. He’s probably studying. Or getting destroyed by his roommate in Mario Kart. Or out getting cheap, greasy food that’s only ever appetizing after 12am. Once he even went to the movies at this time of night.

The part of Ronan’s mind sluggishly pulling itself from the nightmare whispers that, no matter what Adam’s doing, he probably doesn't want to be disturbed.

Ronan scoffs. He knows that’s a lie. Knows that there’s only been one time when Ronan has called and Adam has had to apologize and say “I can’t. Not right now. But let me write just a little more of this essay, okay? And then I can call you back.” And he followed through. Couldn’t talk for long, “the essay is due at the end of the week and I’m meeting with the professor tomorrow to review so I have to finish this draft,” but he let Ronan make him laugh and listened intently as Ronan told him about his day and sounded genuinely sorry when, after only fifteen minutes, he had to get back to work.

Ronan knows he’s not a disturbance to Adam, not unless he’s REALLY trying to be. But his hands are still shaking and terrible feelings are churning in his stomach and stretching tightly across his chest, so maybe he’s not the most rational human being at this very moment. And it’s very easy to dismiss rationality when you’re alone in the dark with only the dead silence of approaching winter and the fleeting memory of a bad dream to keep you company.

He pulls on sweatpants and a knit sweater and drapes a quilt around his shoulders.

Just one quick phone call, he tells himself. Short & sweet, “hey Parrish, you still love me right? Great. Goodnight.”

He climbs the creaking steps to the attic, slips out the dormer window and scurries to the peak of the roof.

His finger hovers above the call button.

Deep breath in, shaky breath out.

He calls.

Adam picks up on the third ring.

“Ronan?” There’s quiet chatter in the background.

“Parrish.” His voice cracks. He coughs to cover it up.

“Hi. One sec,” he says into the phone, then says “I’ll be right back” and “yeah, I’m good on this part, just use my notes,” to whomever is talking in the background. Someone shouts “hi Ronan!” over the noise, but then a door is closing and it’s quiet again.

“Jules says hi,” Adam says.

“So I heard.”

Another door creaks open and shuts. He hears Adam’s breath stutter.

“Cold out?” he asks. The winds aren’t whipping through the mountains like they usually are, but it’s still cold as balls on the roof. Ronan can’t imagine how ice-cold Adam must be up in Ithaca. Dude barely has any body fat as is.

“Yeah, a little chilly,” Adam says in a way that makes it clear he’s fucking freezing.

Ronan pulls the quilt tighter around his body. “What’re you doing?”

“Study group.”

“Wait. _Fuck._ Is it Wednesday? It’s not Wednesday.”

Adam laughs. “No, it’s not. But we have a test this week so we scheduled an extra.”

“Oh, shit. If you gotta go--”

“No, no, it’s okay. We’ve been at it since dinner. I’m due for a break.”

“You sure?”

“Trust me, this is exactly what I need to be doing right now.”

Ronan doesn’t know if it’s Adam’s weird psychic-perception thing or if their years together mean Adam just _gets_ him; regardless, he can always tell when Ronan needs quiet and when Ronan needs distraction. Tonight’s the latter, so Adam spends a good ten minutes running through every insignificant detail of the days since they last spoke on the phone. Every dumb little thing he can remember he says, because the longer he talks the slower Ronan’s heart beats and the steadier his breathing becomes. He loses himself in Adam’s soft timbre, clings to every word the man so carefully chooses, is hypnotized by how his accent lilts and rounds his vowels when he speaks to him, and only him.

If Ronan closes his eyes, he can pretend that Adam’s lying next to him. Could almost reach out and curl his fingers around Adam’s, or map the constellations of freckles along his arm, or trace his profile in the moonlight.

But a moment comes, as it always does, when Adam stops talking. It’s not that he runs out of things to say; if Ronan still needs distraction once he’s gone through everything he can recall, he’ll start reading from one of his textbooks, without hesitation. But sometimes Ronan needs to be given the floor, needs to be shown it’s safe, that it’s open, that when he’s ready to take it, it’s his.

They sit in silence. Ronan listens to Adam breathe. Adam lets him.

“So. You wanna talk about it?” he asks after a few minutes. Because for as much as Ronan comes to things in his own time, in his own way, sometimes he allows Adam to nudge him, just a bit, in the direction he needs to go.

Ronan inhales deeply through his nose and out through his mouth. “I had a bad dream again.”

Adam’s shift is immediate. “Are you okay? What did you bring back? Do I need to call Fox Wa--”

“No, no, not a nightmare,” Ronan says quickly. “Just a...bad dream.”

Adam exhales. “Only you would call that a distinction.”

“Fuck you.”

“What happened?”

Ronan chews on his leather bands. This would be so much easier if Adam were here. If his voice was clear instead of distorted by a shitty android phone. If he could watch the minute shifts in his expression. If he could touch him. It wouldn’t hurt so much, then.

“You don’t have to tell me if it hurts too much,” Adam says softly.

How the fuck does he _do_ that?

Ronan sighs. He’s gotta rip the band-aid off. Just accept the pain for what it is and deal with it, else this...whatever it is--doubt? Worry? Insecurity? His deepest, darkest fear?--will fester and rot him from the inside out until his only option is to implode and take everything important down with him.  

Back when he was at liberty to ignore the blast radius, Ronan was exceptionally talented at self-destruction. But call it personal growth or finding one’s true love or whatever the fuck you want: he can’t see an explosion anymore without imagining the fallout.

He drops his wrist to his lap and closes his eyes. The words dig their fangs into his throat, latch their talons onto his bones.

A deep breath, and he rips the words out, claws and all. “You forgot about me.”

That was clearly not what Adam was expecting to hear. “What? What do you mean?”

“In the dream. I saw you somewhere, like at a store or some shit. I dunno. But you were there and I ran up to you and you didn’t know who the fuck I was. You thought I was attacking you, freaked the fuck out, called the cops and shit, the whole nine fucking yards.”

His voice cracks at the end. He clenches his teeth and grinds his fists into his eyes, because making his eyes water that way is more acceptable than the tears pricking at them right now.

Adam is quiet for longer than Ronan would like. “That wasn’t very nice of me,” he says at last.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ronan groans. “I know...I know it wasn’t you. I just. It felt like…like something...like I could...”

“Like you could have pulled it out and made it real.”

“Yeah,” Ronan sighs, because of fucking course Adam can vocalize exactly what his fears are and not sound judgmental about them, no matter how fucking nuts they seem.

“Well, I still remember you. Obviously.”

Ronan’s throat is still too tight for him to respond with anything beyond an untranslatable noise.

“I remember that time you nearly ran me over outside of Monmouth and I fell into a puddle and ruined one of my Aglionby shirts, so you gave me yours since you weren’t going to wear them anymore, anyways.”

“Not like I knew there was a nasty-ass puddle right there,” Ronan grumbles.

“I remember that one night you bribed me with Cook Out to come on a drive with you and you took me to that overlook on Route 64 and you had Chainsaw steal my fries when I wasn’t looking.”

“Those were damn good fries,” Ronan says.

“I wouldn’t know,” Adam replies, dry as can be. “Because she ate them all.”

Ronan smiles.

“I remember when you drove 8 hours straight to come visit me when I got the flu last year, even though I told you not to come because you’d get sick, and you stayed with me and brought me medicine and complained about every single documentary we watched, and then called _me_ to complain about how sick you were the next week. Even though _I fucking warned you._ ”

“I’m offended you didn’t take my illness seriously.”

“I remember that time over the summer when you took me on a date to that super nice restaurant in the next town over. And then I found out we only went there because Gansey and Blue and Cheng were there and you wanted to _spy_ on them. And then they caught us and Blue was so angry we had to leave, and we ended up eating Sheetz in your car and you got barbecue sauce all over my tie trying to make out with me over the gear shift.”

“Epitome of fucking romance.”

“Moral of the story is, how could I ever forget about you?” Adam says, full of fondness. “You’re too much of an asshole for _anyone_ to forget.”

Ronan laughs, and it echoes across the fields. Adam chuckles on the other side, and _damn_ if that sound doesn’t send butterflies through his stomach every fucking time.

Ronan’s hands have finally stopped shaking.

“What’re you looking at right now?” Adam asks sleepily.   

“The stars,” Ronan says. He maps Cassiopeia and Cygnus, finds Ursa Major, too.

“Hmm. Same.”

Adam stifles a yawn. It’s time for him to go back inside. “I’m glad I got to hear your voice tonight,” he says.  

“Ditto.”

“Only two weeks and 3 days until Thanksgiving. But who’s counting, right?”

“Geeze, Parrish, you’re such a sap.”

Adam snorts. “Pot callin’ the kettle black, asshole.”

“Whatever, shithead. I love you.”

“I love you too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“You mean later today?”

“God, you’re the worst,” Adam sighs, but Ronan can hear the smile.

“And yet you’re counting down to see me.”

“So are you,” Adam replies.

“Only 418 hours left,” Ronan says, because he doesn’t lie.

“25080 minutes,” Adam says, because he’s trying harder to be honest.

“That’s not too bad.”

“Not at all.”

Ronan looks at the moon. A silver crescent among the sparkling heavens. He has the strangest feeling Adam’s looking at it, too.

“Goodnight, Adam,” he whispers to the moon.

“Goodnight, Ronan,” the moon, and Adam, whisper back.

Adam hangs up, and with an exhale, The Barns are quite once again.

The moon shines a little brighter.

Ronan doesn’t feel quite so alone anymore.


End file.
